All this prompted POGO to send a letter yesterday to the President raising questions about the White House's handling of the report. Representative Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) also wrote a blistering letter to the President, which you may read here.

As POGO Executive Director Danielle Brian said in today's statement, “It’s extremely troubling that the White House may have suppressed sound scientific recommendations in order to massage its message to the public.”

EPA was not directly involved in the creation of the oil budget, and many of the issues involved were outside EPA's mandate. EPA officials and scientists were among many who participated in a robust conversation about specific technical and scientific issues. All good scientific discussions involve a robust back and forth among scientists, and that's exactly what happened here.